


Mrs Hudsons Story

by EveHarris



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Confessions, Family, Origins, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveHarris/pseuds/EveHarris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This started as a one shot of Mrs Hudson talking to John Watson during the evens of 'A Scandal in Belgravia'. It's since grown, there will probably be six chapters before I finish. It's the story of Mrs Hudsons life, as told to (and hopefully, eventually by) John and Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Set during 'A Scandal in Belgravia', John goes to check on Mrs Hudson.

\------------  
"Mrs Hudson, Are you alright?" I hear John Watsons voice behind me.  
"Oh, I'm fine dear. Can I get you something to drink?"  
"That would be lovely, Mrs Hudson" He sits down at my kitchen table "I'm not your housekeeper mind though."  
"No, Mrs Hudson."  
I can feel him watching me as I turn to fill the kettle, doctor’s eyes searching for a tremor in my hand, ears listening for the catch in my voice.  
He speaks like a concerned doctor, "You're sure you're okay? I understand if you're not. Not many people would be after being tied up and held at gunpoint. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You weren't being silly by crying"  
I don't speak.  
"Mrs Hudson?"  
I set two cups of tea on the table and take the seat opposite him. "Have I ever told you how I met Sherlock?"

"No, he said he helped you out, with, uh, your husband." He taps his finger on the table a couple of times. "That's all."  
I smile, "I met Sherlock when he was about, ooh, eleven? He was a boarder at the school where my husband and I worked. I was the housekeeper of Nadder House, where Sherlock and Mycroft both stayed and my husband taught Swimming."  
"Sherlock was a funny little boy, a streak of lighting with a head of curls and he loved my fruitcake. He'd sit in my kitchen every Saturday afternoon, eating cake and explaining all his school work to me. We didn't have any children at home, my Mary got married the year before, and I'd missed the noise you see. It made me happy to have him around. "  
"It sounds funny, but Sherlock almost became a son to me, of course, I loved all my boys in Nadder House, but Sherlock just seemed so, vulnerable at times. You know what he's like, he didn't have many friends, ostracized most his form mates and masters." I chuckle.  
"About 3 years later my husband got into trouble at the school, some of the boys accused him of being," I pause, looking into my lap, knitting my fingers together, "Inappropriate. He assured me it was nothing and true enough, it all blew over."

"I saw Sherlock for the last time in 1995, right after his mother died. He came to the house in the middle of the night, drunk, or on drugs. I didn't like to pry. I gave him tea and the sofa. Then when I woke up the next morning he was gone, dropped out of school. No note, just folded bed sheets."  
"In 1998 it happened again, another boy accused Ralph of," I swallow "Pederasty. Then the boy was found floating in the school swimming pool. Ralph ran away that night. I never saw him again, but I knew he was guilty."  
"He wasn't a nice man, John. I only married him because we'd got into trouble. He had some very bad friends. They'd come to the house, then two weeks later I'd find myself lying to the police and hiding things around the house. If I didn't do a good enough job, or Ralph thought they saw something he'd.."

"You don't have to go on Mrs Hudson."

"No dear, I want to. It's sweet of you to be concerned, but this is ancient history now." I rearrange my hands in my lap and smooth out my skirt, "So, anyway, my Sister in Law died in 1998 and my brother gave me this place. I'd been living with them, helping out in the cafe, but he couldn't bear to be here without her."

"Had they been married long?"

"Only 10 years. Derek married late. "I sit back in my chair and look John straight in the eyes. "I was working in the cafe, just cleaning up one night, having a little cry and thinking about Doris. The door opened and in walked Sherlock. I knew him instantly, and it was funny, but he looked surprised to see me. It's hard to tell, he's so infrequently surprised." John smiles, "He recognised me and immediately asked for fruit cake. I started crying, really big sobs and he sat me in a chair and gave me fruitcake and tea." I laugh, "Oh he was so concerned about me John, it was sweet really, and I ended up telling him everything. All about Ralph, our marriage, the school, and do you know what he said?"

John thinks for a quick second. "'I know?' would be my best guess."

"You're right. He said 'I know. I see.' then he got up and left. I didn't see him again for another six months. I turned on the news one day and there he was, responsible for finding Ralph Hudson, the fugitive murderer who had eluded the MET and Scotland Yard for years." I put my hand over Johns, "That's why I'm fine dear, no matter what happens I know he'll come, he'll look after me. He's my Sherlock, and as that nasty little American was shouting at me, I knew I'd be fine. Not because I know how to take a beating, or because I know how to keep my mouth shut. But because I knew that eventually Sherlock would come home."


	2. Remembering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A follow up to 'Mrs Hudsons Story'. I've posted it as a new chapter, because Mrs Hudson won't leave me alone, and I think this may turn into something longer.  
> Set during ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’. Mrs Hudson is alone in 221 and starts remembering her life.  
> Feedback is my crack, so please, if you like it, leave me a comment. It keeps me writing ;)

==============================

‘Sherlock and John are off again, investigating a dog in Devon, Dartmoor I think they said. John left the number of the pub where they’re staying. I almost feel like giving them a call, checking they’re alright. I know they’re grown men, but they’re my boys.

The boys are gone; the house is quiet, and I’m sat in their flat, safe in Sherlock’s chair by the fire, drinking the good whiskey that John keeps hidden. Bless him, I don’t think he knows that Sherlock and I both know about it and replace the bottle once it starts looking noticeably empty.

I was born in 1947, nine months after my parents wedding and almost eighteen months after my father got back from Singapore, fresh from spending his war in a prison camp in the Dutch East Indies.  
Whiskey was my fathers drink, strong, cheap and never watered down.  
To smell Whiskey and Drum tobacco is to inadvertently inhale the scent of my childhood. The day Sherlock gave up smoking was a great day. I hated walking into a room when he’d been smoking; it was like walking into the smoke of my past.

My father wasn’t easy, I suppose that’s the reason I took up with Ralph. Ben Thornton ruled his home with an iron fist. My mother, his second wife, died in Childbirth when I was 4 and his first wife had been killed in a bombing raid in 1943. So there he was, an ex-internee who still woke up screaming, remembering his friends dying around him in a Prison Camp, suddenly faced with 6 children ranging from 4 to 17 years old. He worked on the buses by day, and he drank and smoked by night.

He sent Libby off to work in a department store the day after my mother died, my brothers followed soon afterwards, one sent to a distant cousin to help work in the mines, another one sent to Lowestoft to help a friend on their fishing boat. One by one the older children were disposed of, as if he couldn’t stand to have any reminder of his first wife around.  
They all disappeared, wiped from memory save a Christmas Card once a year which he read, then threw on the fire. 

By the spring of 1955, I was 8 years old and it was just me and my younger brother, Thomas, left. We shared an old Tenement building in Walthamstow with 3 other families and I cooked, I scrubbed and I tiptoed up around the lump of my father who sat slowly mouldering, in his chair. He never seemed to be able to let go of the Far East, though he never told us about it. He never hit us, but he threw things and there were days when neither of us could go back to the house. We knew if we left him for a few days, he’d drink until he passed out, then sober up and take us for Fish ‘n’ Chips.

At14 I was offered a place at the local grammar school on a full scholarship, but couldn’t go because there was no money for uniform. I left school and went to work in a bakery instead, lying about my age so they’d give me the job and not send me back to school.  
The bakery was where I met Ralph.  
He was charming at first, a handsome boy with a sly smile and his dark curly hair gelled back with Brylcreem and Winklepicker shoes polished to a sheen. He was Cosh Boy, a second generation Teddy Boy who’d been given the job of delivering bread because had a Motorbike.  
He’d take me up West, dancing, I can still remember all the words to Jonny Kidd & The Pirates ‘Shakin’ all Over’, we must have danced to it so many times. He bought me flowers and told me I was beautiful. Took me to the nicest restaurants – I never thought to ask where the money was coming from. Looking back I suppose he must have been taking money from the bakery. Over charging those who could least afford it, maybe he stole it. I don’t know.  
Oh! The things we’d say if we could go back and talk to ourselves at fifteen.

Unlike my father, Ralph used to get nasty, twisting my arm, shouting at me, calling me names if I didn’t behave the way he thought ‘proper’, a cuff around the head if he saw me looking at him while he looked at younger girls. I saw him hold a flick knife to someone’s throat when we were away on a weekend jaunt to Brighton. He laughed and told me it was a joke. The boy he’d been holding by his hair laughed too, a hollow laugh, like he was laughing so Ralph would stop, would let him go, would see him as an ally.  
But he was my earth and sky. He protected me, fought off two men who’d followed me home one night; he talked my father out of a rage after he’d come home to find I didn’t have dinner ready and the privy hadn’t been cleaned and resupplied with newspaper. Ralph had arrived to pick me up for a date, just as my father had started shouting at my brother and me. Ralph walked into the sitting room, calm as a cow, closed the door and 10 seconds later the shouting stopped. 

It wasn’t long until we got into trouble. Ralph told me I’d sleep with him if I loved him. I didn’t know a thing about how babies are made, so it came as a shock to me when I found out I was expecting my John.  
It was a quiet wedding, a cold, rainy Thursday afternoon in February at the registry office. Ralph, Thomas and my Father all went to the pub afterwards and I went home to cook dinner, wash his socks and try to be the perfect wife.’


	3. Sherlock remembers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock remembers meeting Mrs Hudson in the cafe in Baker Street.

===================

Sentiment. 

It’s a terribly human habit. But it has its place.

I didn't expect to see Mrs Hudson when I walked into that cafe. Yet there she was, cleaning the counter mournfully, methodically. I opened the door and remembered to smile; she had liked to see me smile. ‘Show your teeth Sherlock’, she’d say, and I’d grimace and make her laugh. The way she’d laugh, tinkling notes like a piano.  
But she wasn't laughing now, her back was straight, held up with stubborn pride. A fighting spirit but her breathing was deliberate. Holding something back or in. Her clothes were immaculate as always, but her mouth was set in a hard line and the bags under her eyes told me she hadn't slept in three days. The cloth in her hands was wringing wet, so she wasn't thinking about what she was doing. 

I smiled “Please can I have some of your boiled fruitcake Mrs Hudson?”

Her hand tightened on the rag and some of the pride slipped from her shoulders as she let her body sag a little, “Oh, Sherlock!”, she muttered then leant her arms on the counter , head in her hands as huge sobs moved though her, making her spine judder beneath her mulberry coloured jumper.  
I moved towards her and gingerly put my hand out, paused, then placed it on her back in what I hoped was a comforting manner. One hand left her face and grabbed my left hand, holding it tightly.

“Oh, Sherlock, oh my darling. Sweetheart let’s have a look at you.” She sniffled, producing a well used lace edged, white cotton hanky from one sleeve. She straightened up, sniffed again and held out both arms, hands grasping my elbows. She looked at me like she was a mechanic checking there wasn't a loose connection before he started the engine. Mrs Hudson was lost, any fool could see that. What they couldn't see was the way the crease between her eyebrows had deepened, and the set of her lips had hardened. Or the way she favoured her right leg and never let her hands rest by her sides any more.  
I smiled at her and stepped away, preparing teapot, two mugs, sugar, milk. I put two slices of cake on a plate and walked to a table and poured the tea from the old cracked teapot. I walked towards Mrs Hudson and placed the plate on the counter in front of her. “It’s Saturday afternoon Mrs Hudson, I think we should talk. It is tradition after all.”

She sniffed into her hanky again and dabbed at her nose. Delicate little gestures that betrayed her and made her look like a scared animal. I pulled out a chair for her and she sat, slowly and arthritically. Pulling her knees under the table, she tucked her hanky into one sleeve and slowly asked, “Why did you pick up that teapot Sherlock?”  
I regarded it, taking my seat. I picked it up and pouring the tea answered her question, “It’s the teapot you had in your kitchen. The school teapot with Nadder crest that we used every Saturday afternoon. The handle is chipped from the time I set it too hard on the table and knocked the iron over.” I finish pouring and place the teapot on the table, turning the handle to face her.

She looked at it for a second, scientifically, like she was dissecting its significance in her mind. Then she placed her hands either side of it and flung it at the wall behind me.  
I ducked as shattered china and scaling hot tea fly around my head.  
“Fuck the teapot!” she exclaimed, then crumpled, puts her head in her hands and started crying, softly this time. Her sobs sounded quietly acquiescent and she whispered “I'm sorry my love. But that bloody teapot.” She raised her eyes to meet mine and started to speak, “My sister in law died last week, left me this place and some rooms upstairs. If you ever need a place to stay, you’d be welcome here.”

“What’s wrong Mrs Hudson?” I spoke slowly, with sentiment.

“Oh my dear, it all went so awfully wrong..”

She told me about her husband, the school. She thought she was confessing, she saw me as the Priest, offering benediction. She thought I hadn't seen the scars on his knuckles, the way he slung his fist when he demonstrated swimming strokes, hadn't noticed his street brawlers’ gait. I’d noticed the way she started limping, the broken stair rails the morning after she’d 'slipped on some ice' and fractured her pelvis. I knew the locker room rumours were true.  
But I sat there and held her hand, listening as she told me things she’d clearly never told anyone before.

When she finished I looked at her and spoke, “I know. I see.” I stood and buttoned my coat. I looked down at her, sat, defeated at the table and found myself speaking. “Mrs Hudson, you were my best friend at school and the closest thing I had to a mother. I’ll take the room upstairs and I imagine I’ll see you in 6 months.” I walked towards the door “Mrs Hudson. Without you, England would fall.” I opened the door and stepped outside “Good bye Mrs. Hudson.”


End file.
